(Citation Needed) – SYNOPSIS: The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July 9, 1918, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously) to Second Lieutenant (Air Corps) John Keyes Wolf (ASN: 0-827116), United States Army Air Forces, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Pilot of a B-24 Heavy Bomber in the 454th Bombardment Group (H), FIFTEENTH Air Force, while participating in a bombing mission on 18 December 1944, during a mission to attack the oil refineries at Osweicim, Poland. After going over the target with only three engines functioning, Lieutenant Wolf’s bomber commenced losing a second on the route home, finally forcing him to feather it. He threaded his desperate way through the icy skies attempting to maintain as high altitude as possible. When it became apparent that altitude was fast diminishing, he ordered the crew to evacuate every item of equipment unattached to the aircraft to lighten its weight. The gunners in the waist actually dismounted their 50-caliber machine guns and threw them out along with boxes of heavy ammunition and all other equipment except ditching equipment for the hazardous trip across the Adriatic. After losing a third engine, he attempted to sound the bail-out warning bell, but it failed, having been shot out by enemy fire. He then, by radio, directed the crew to bail, demanding that the nose and the deck be cleared, and he gained affirmative responses from both those areas as six crewmen, one after the other, bailed out into the snowy skies over mountainous Yugoslavia. Lieutenant Wolff never received a response by intercom from the waist, and realizing that three crewmen had been trapped with no knowledge of the bail-out order, he attempted in a desperate and heroic effort to land the crippled aircraft on the side of a mountain. With limited power, the nose of the aircraft dipped as it neared the ground, struck the top of a knoll, thrust him through the windshield to an instant death, broke apart, and burst into flames. The three crewmen in the waist took the impact in crash positions, and two of them died immediately. A third, critically injured, nonetheless was able to crawl through a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft made by a bursting oxygen tank and was rescued by the native Yugoslavs and pulled to safety. The personal courage and zealous devotion to duty displayed by Second Lieutenant Wolf on this occasion, at the cost of his life, have upheld the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the 15th Air Force, and the United States Army Air Forces.